A gold bull's head graced the front of the lyre, and its beard ... These lyres from Ur show that the Mesopotamians had musical technology that was cutting edge at the time.

The bull lyre is one of three excavated from the royal cemetery of Ur. Each lyre had a different animal head protruding from the front of the sound box to denote its pitch: the bull lyre was bass, the ...

The process of reconstructing the bull lyre proved a difficult and time-consuming job ... or lower in response to the change in the length of the string. Wooley, C. L. Ur Excavations: The Royal ...